


Haven and its Missing Mothers

by CookieDoughMe



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Gen, Haven and its missing mothers, Haven is full of fathers, Meta, Sexism, Spoilers, where are all the mothers?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25918072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookieDoughMe/pseuds/CookieDoughMe
Summary: This is not a fic but a slightly expanded and hopefully more organised and coherent version ofthis tumblr ranton my thoughts about Haven’s tendency to prioritise fathers and minimise mothers in its storytelling. (This isn’t unique to Haven, obviously; this is what a patriarchal culture does.)I’ve focused on the stories of the main and recurring characters, but see alsohttps://havenmaine.fandom.com/wiki/Tropes/Womenfor some excellent numbers-based analysis of fathers vs mothers in the show (based I think on seasons one to four) across minor characters as well.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Haven and its Missing Mothers

I got thinking about mothers on this show because, with one notable exception, they are almost entirely absent. Which in some contexts might not be a big deal; you watch a show about a bunch of adults you don't necessarily expect to meet, or even learn anything about, all of their mothers. However, this is a show in which family histories are extremely important, a show in which the plot line stretches back decades, and a show in which there are many significant fathers.

[First, a little disclaimer: I do not intend to imply with any of this that families should always follow the traditional Father + Mother + Children structure. Quite the opposite really; a single-parent family, or one with two fathers or two mothers (or more) is just as much of a family as the traditional patriarchal model. In Dwight’s case for instance, we see him as a single father, and that is a nice story to tell and a nice thing to show - it’s just that, someone had to give birth to Lizzie. She didn’t just pop into existence out of nowhere (even in Haven, I'm pretty sure _someone_ must have given birth to her). Someone carried her for nine months of pregnancy and went through however many hours of labour to give birth to her, but the existence of such a person is barely acknowledged (and even then not until a good way through season five). And maybe it would answer some questions if that person had been Dwight, but that’s clearly not what the writers had in mind.]

So; the three main characters all have absent mothers. It’s true that Audrey also grows up without her father, Duke's father dies when he's young and Nathan doesn't remember his biological father, so to some degree or another they all have absent fathers as well. But for Duke and Nathan’s stories, their fathers are highly significant; we know their names, we meet them, their actions are central to the plot line. Their mothers are not.

In fact in Duke’s case, we meet not only his father, Simon Crocker, but his grandfather Roy Crocker too. We meet them, we hear things from their perspective, we see the things they write in the family journal. Their existence and their choices (particularly Simon's) are relevant to aspects of the plot that happen decades after they died and across multiple seasons. Whereas for Duke’s mother and his grandmother, we know almost nothing about them. We don’t know their names, we never see either of them or hear anything from their perspective, and only his mother is even mentioned (and that only once).

[ **Updated to add** : That last part might not be entirely accurate; I think Roy's wife is referred to. He phones her I think, or refers to her when Duke is trying to persuade him to leave Haven. But all that tells us about her is that she exists.]

We also meet Duke’s half-brother Wade Crocker. They share a father, Simon. We learn nothing whatsoever about Wade’s mother. In fact, for all that we hear about multiple generations of Crockers throughout the show (and for all that the Crocker family history becomes more and more important with each season), all of the Crockers we hear about are male. The only exceptions are a single reference to Duke’s (unnamed) mother, and the existence of baby Jean, who Duke fathers with Beattie through the Trouble that turns her into Helena.

Jean is sent out of Haven to be adopted, so from her perspective both (or all three?) of her biological parents are absent. From our perspective, Duke is one of the main characters, but Helena is never mentioned again outside of that one episode, and Beattie only occasionally. While we don’t get much insight into how this experience affects Duke, we see even less from Beattie’s perspective. A Trouble meant that she got pregnant while her body wasn’t really even hers, and after she's given birth her baby is sent away from her to be adopted whether she wants that or not. How she copes with this, we have no idea. Her perspective is not part of the story.

In Nathan’s case, he effectively has two fathers; his biological father Max Hansen, and his adoptive father Garland Wuornos. We meet both of them; Max is only in one episode, but he is a key character in it. Garland is a regular character throughout the first season, and returns multiple times after that, either played by the same actor or by younger actors in multiple time periods that we see via flashbacks and timetravel plot lines. And he’s also referred to in episodes he doesn’t even feature in (e.g. by the Teagues brothers in 5.08). For Nathan’s mother(s) though? Well, we know that Garland’s wife died, and we know her name (Elizabeth) but that’s about it; we never meet her or hear anything from her perspective. And it is not really clear whether Elizabeth was Nathan’s adoptive or biological mother. If the former, we know nothing at all about whoever Nathan’s biological mother was. (I've seen convincing arguments that she must have been Nathan's biological mother who then married Garland, because that's the only way the timeline can make any sense - but it's not immediately obvious from what is said about her on screen. We don't get enough detail about her to even tell exactly how she was related to the child who called her Mom.)

Audrey does eventually meet both of her parents (kind of - even if strictly speaking they are Mara’s parents). We get to meet Charlotte, we see things from her point of view and she does make choices that have a significant impact on the plot. So she is a notable exception. Although it's perhaps also worth noting that the significance of her actions are still outweighed by Croatoan's who is effectively the person responsible for this whole situation, and whose choices are also fundamental to how it ends.

And then if we look out beyond those central characters, we have Dwight. We don’t hear much about his parents, I think the only reference is when he tells Duke about his Trouble activating; he talks briefly about a father, but doesn’t mention a mother. And then obviously Dwight's most significant family relationship in the show is with his daughter, and we learn hardly anything about her mother. I think all we get is some basic information that she left - there might be some other little details dotted around the place that I've forgotten but I think it's fair to say she is not a significant part of the story. We never meet her, I don't think we even get a name. Even the [webisodes _which specifically look at Dwight's backstory_ don't so much as mention her existence](https://cookiedoughmeagain.tumblr.com/post/184961435966/escape-to-haven-webisodes-7-of-8-the-recruit). (On one level it's completely fair that Dwight might not want to talk about his ex, but if that's the case it would have actually been interesting to see an indication of that and I don't remember one.)

[ **Updated to add** ; There is a brief, two sentence reference to Dwight's ex in episode 5.12 - Chemistry, when McHugh asks him "You ever talk to the ex?" and Dwight replies "Not a word." If we assume this is the same ex who is Lizzie's mother, I think that that's the first acknowledgement she exists.]

Other significant family relationships; Gloria and baby Aaron. We do meet his mother, but only fairly briefly before she dies. Aaron carries his father's name and his father's Trouble and all his mother really does in the story is exist and get scared and die. None of which is her fault of course; all of them are scared and there was no way for her to avoid dying. But we don't learn much about her. We get a sense of who Ben is as a person, how this Trouble has affected him, how he tries to deal with it. We see the fundamental and terrifying choice he makes to sacrifice himself for the good of his son and the town as a whole. And we can extrapolate from all of that (and from some of what Gloria says) to get a sense of what Ashley Harker's experience might have been like, but we don't actually _know her_ at all. (We also, I think, hear a little bit about Ben’s father but nothing about his biological mother.)

The only example of recurring characters I can think of where we know the mother and not a father is Julia and Eleanor. And they're both great characters but neither of them are in the show for all that long. Neither of them have a particularly significant impact on the overall plot of the series or the fate of any of the other characters. Neither of them are referred to much after they’re gone.

The thing with this is, that all of these characters are great characters and individually all of them are great stories. None of these specific plot lines is a story that shouldn’t be told. But there's just something missing that I wanted to acknowledge; there is a notable mother-shaped gap running through the whole thing. Because, when you’ve got an adult character where we don't know anything about their parents, that’s fine. When you’ve got a character where we know about one parent and not the other, that’s fine. But, when you’ve got multiple characters where we know about one parent and not the other it starts to feel like a pattern and when it's almost always the mother we don't know much about it feels like a pattern that is the result of some incredibly unhelpful and unfair cultural biases. (Especially when paired with the fact that a lot of the Troubles seem to be inherited only through the male line for no apparent reason, as well as with the male-dominated nature of the cast in general, and with how significant many of the father stories are.)

Yes Charlotte and Eleanor are exceptions, but I'm not sure that's enough to balance it out. There is still this feeling that the fathers of these characters are much more important than the women who gave birth to them and I think it’s important to be aware of what that says about the patriarchal aspect of mainstream Western culture and how little value it places on the literal labour that goes into physically creating a child.

[ **Updated to add** : Another potential exception is Jennifer. Though she never knew her biological parents, she tells the Teagues that her adoptive parents were wonderful, that her father died when she was a teenager and her mom died five years ago. So we don't learn anything more about her adoptive mother than that, but this may be _the only example of a regular character who had a positive relationship with a mother figure through her childhood and into adulthood_ (Eleanor and Julia appearing to argue more than anything).]

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sure there’s some detail and/or implications to this that I’ve missed (or got wrong) so I would be very happy to hear others’ thoughts as well.  
> -  
> And if you're interested in any fic that tries to fill in some of these gaps, may I offer [Mrs Crocker](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15210968) which takes a look at some of the Crocker family history from Duke's mother's point of view.


End file.
